Category: immigration

What Jack Cafferty Said

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I believe that I’ve said before that I am a hard liner on immigration, though I don’t side with the nativists who favor going after the illegal aliens in a draconian manner.

As such, I whole heartedly agree with Jack Cafferty’s take on the judge that issued a stay on “no match” letters, which put employers on notice when there are irregularities in the social security data for employees.

It puts the onus of compliance with the law with the employers, where it should stand, and it gives 90 days, which is sufficient time to resolve the issue, and the idea that it “potentially enormous burden on the employer” (like OSHA, as Jack says, or the EPA as I say) is ludicrous.

No one living in another country has a right to work here. Immigration should be legal, and should be governed by the interests and values of us as a society.

U.S. Sues Illinois to Let Employers Use Immigrant Databases

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The state of Illinois has passed a law forbids employers from enrolling in the federal worker verification database program, and the feds have filed suit against this.

This is one case where Michael Chertoff is right. (I can’t believe that I said that)

The law pre-empts a federal one, which is unconstitutional, and prohibiting employers from making an honest attempt to verify that their employers are, in fact, legal is simply crazy.

I tend to be a bit of a hard liner on immigration*, but I think that an objective of making it easier for employers to verify that job applicants are not breaking the law is a basic goal of any society. Illegal aliens do not have an inherent right to work in the US.

That being said, the database is buggy and slow, and needs to be fix.

*I favor going after employers who negligently employ illegals hard (think forfeiture), and offering bounties by way of green cards for illegals who rat these employers out.

The Rich/Poor Divide on Immigration

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Dean Baker correctly criticizes the New York Times for mischaracterizing the nature of immigration in this article.

The Times claims that poor immigrants find far more in the way of barriers than do the rich, and rightly notes that while poor immigrants may run across the borders, “The United States much more severely restricts the flows of highly educated immigrants than less-educated immigrants, it just uses different mechanisms. In the case of highly educated immigrants, the government at least partially enforces laws that prohibit employers from hiring immigrants at wages that are lower than what citizens would be willing to work for. There are no newspapers, hospitals, universities, or law firms that bring in large numbers of undocumented professionals and pay them half of the prevailing wage in their occupation. Such an institution would almost certainly be shut down, with the employers facing prosecution.“

This is not entirely accurate either. While the poor may be smuggled across borders in the back of 18 wheelers, and the more well to do will fly in, which makes the trek for the former easier, the divide is not between rich and poor, but between workers, and “professionals”.

Programmers, engineers, and nurses (which kind of eliminates your hospital example) are routinely replaced by lower paid H1b/L1 workers, and these visas are also used to lower wages in the fields.

The divide is that people who draw up this policy (Lawyers, Economists, and other Academicians), those who belong to professions that they might want their children to go into (Doctors), and those who are needed to cheer lead these policies (Journalists), are protected.

It’s about protecting, “People like us”, more than it is about rich and poor.

This is How You Apologize if You are Mensch

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Brian Caplan offers an apology.

EconLog, Mea Culpa: How I Succumbed to Anti-Foreign Bias, Bryan Caplan: Library of Economics and Liberty

Mea Culpa: How I Succumbed to Anti-Foreign Bias
Bryan Caplan

A high fraction of immigrants are young, low-skilled, Hispanic males. Given these demographics, I long assumed that immigrants would have relatively high crime rates. While I kept this problem in perspective, I took it for granted that increased crime was a genuine drawback of immigration.

I was wrong.

A fascinating NBER Working Paper (earlier, free version here) by Kristin Butcher and Anne Piehl shows that, despite their demographics, immigrants are drastically less criminal than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants have one-fifth the incarceration rate of natives. Yes, natives are incarcerated at five times the rate of the foreign-born:

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Let’s be clear, the error here is minor, as he is pro large scale immigration, he was arguing for this in spite of what he thought were crime issues, which is far more benign than what Lou Dobbs done.

I tend to be closer to Dobbs than I am to Caplan, though for economic issues (I don’t believe that there are jobs Americans won’t do, just jobs they won’t do for pennies.

Danes tout flamethrower-packing robot ‘farmworker’ | The Register

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This is not a farm impliment. It’s the non-nuclear alternative to neighborhood nuclear superiority.

Watch the vid, it’s funny as hell, and proof that Nesmith is a genius.

Danes tout flamethrower-packing robot ‘farmworker’
By Lewis Page
Published Thursday 5th July 2007 13:50 GMT

Danish agro-boffins have developed a robot which appears at first sight to be a welcome diversion from the ongoing parade of deadly military slaughter machines.

“Hortibot“, brainchild of Scandinavian scientists led by Dr Rasmus Nyholm Jørgensen of Aarhus University, is supposedly a peaceful robot farmworker. It uses GPS to navigate itself around the fields, mowing, spraying, or doing other tiresome tasks while the human landowners fill in the subsidy forms.

Hortibot can even do the weeding, and not simply by spraying chemicals about. The Daily News of Ludington, Michigan, got the story when one of the Danish designers visited the States.

“Currently, the robot can identify approximately 25 different kinds of weeds,” according to the Michigan newshounds.

“Hortibot has a variety of weed-removing attachments and methods. It can manually pick weeds,” apparently.

This is good news indeed; at last, a faithful robot pal intended to toil away for the benefit of humanity rather than spying on people or eliminating them in an apocalyptic mechanised bloodbath.

But such foolish dreams of amity and between man and machine were swiftly unsettled. It seems that Hortibot also has other, more robust capabilities as well as its weed-picking apparatus. The agro-droid can also target its adversaries with “flames, or a laser”.

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“The labour problem will bring this in, when the government gets done with their immigration laws,” Schwass reportedly commented. He was no doubt referring to the US Border Patrol’s plan to install Eye-of-Sauron style scanner towers along the Mexican border in order to stand off the terrorists and huddled masses.

Good News: Immigration Bill Takes Body Blow

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Quite frankly, I’m not concerned about amnesty.

I object to the slave labor guest worker program. It’s a deal breaker for me.

I also think that the wall is bull$%#@. 30% of illegals overstay visas, and the draw is employers.

Strong anti-employer measures is what is needed.

Additionally, this is a Bush loss, and makes him even more toxic, which might help in getting us out of Iraq.

Yes, I am suggesting that absent a need to pass any bill right now, it’s best to take Bush a notch.

We can do something with a Dem in the WH.

Senate immigration bill suffers crushing defeat
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush’s immigration bill suffered a crushing defeat Thursday in the Senate, when members voted against advancing the controversial legislation.

A final tally for the vote has not yet been announced.

The bill would provides a path to citizenship for some of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and toughens border security.

If the bill fails, supporters and opponents of the controversial legislation claim there is no way to bring it back before this Congress ends.

Senators voting against cutting off debate and referring the bill for a final vote. The cloture vote required a three-fifths majority, or 60 votes.

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Missing Soldier’s Wife Faces Deportation

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I am appalled.

Missing Soldier’s Wife Faces Deportation, As Military Searches For Kidnapped Soldier In Iraq, U.S. Threatens To Send Wife Back To Dominican Republic

(CBS/AP) While the U.S. military searches for a soldier missing in Iraq, kidnapped by insurgents possibly allied with al Qaeda, his wife back home in Massachusetts may be deported by the U.S. government.

Army Spec. Alex Jimenez, who has been missing since his unit was attacked by insurgents in Iraq on May 12, had petitioned for a green card for his wife, Yaderlin Hiraldo, whom he married in 2004.

Their attorney, Matthew Kolken, said 23-year-old Hiraldo illegally entered the United States in 2001 to reunite with her husband, whom she had met in her native Dominican Republic and later married at his New York State Army base in 2004.

Her husband’s request for a green card and legal residence status for his wife alerted authorities to her status, Kolken said.

She now faces deportation, reports CBS station WBZ correspondent Beth Germano, and would be barred from applying for a green card for 10 years.

Her attorney is seeking a hardship waiver, which so far the government won’t grant.

“I can’t imagine a bigger injustice than that, to be deporting [the wife of] someone who is fighting and possibly dying for our country,” Kolken told WBZ.

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Republicans Piss Away Hispanic vote.

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Truth be told, I tend toward the restrictive side to immigration, but it’s not over concern about Hispanics.

I’m more concerned with potentially importing anti-Semitic Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, German, Latvian, Lithuanian, or Estonian skinheads than I am about someone from Latin America, and I’m not too concerned about them.

I’m not that concerned about the above either. When people come to America, they tend to leave a lot of that behind, which is a good thing.

I’m concerned about immigration being used to depress wages, and it is used that way with H1b and L-1 visas, and the repeated suggestions about slave labor guest workers, who would constitute a permanent underclass.

I also agree with Paul Krugman’s assessment that a large underclass creates a breeding ground for right wing politics.

That being said, there are clearly is both a right wing and a left wing position on expanded immigration (cheap labor and empatyh respectively) and on more restricted immigration (racism and wages respectively).

Personally, I favor a bounty program for illegals who rat out employers.

That being said, the Republican anti-immigration side is clearly racist, and it shows to the newly minted Americans.

New mood from new citizens

Latino immigrants in South Florida who have traditionally registered with the GOP have felt alienated by the party, critics say.
By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
June 16, 2007

MIAMI BEACH — As a Cuban who fled Fidel Castro’s communist rule for a new life in the U.S., Julio Izquierdo would seem a natural Republican voter — a sure bet to adopt the same political lineage that has long guided most of his countrymen who resettled in South Florida.

But moments after taking his oath this week to become a U.S. citizen and registering to vote, the grocery store employee said he felt no such allegiances.

“I don’t know whether Bush is a Democrat or a Republican, but whatever he is, I’m voting the other way,” Izquierdo, 20, said Thursday as he waited for a taxi after a mass naturalization ceremony at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Izquierdo said he did not like President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war and was miffed at politicians, most of them Republican, who seem to dislike immigrants.

That sentiment, expressed by several of the 6,000 new citizens who took their oaths Thursday in group ceremonies that take place regularly in immigrant-heavy cities nationwide, underscored the troubled environment facing the GOP in the buildup to next year’s presidential election.

Surveys show that among Latino voters — a bloc Bush had hoped to woo into the Republican camp — negative views about the party are growing amid a bitter debate over immigration policy.

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Tech Companies Want Their Slave Labor

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What this is about is workers being free to tell them to “take this job and shove it”, and not leave the US.

Any visa in which losing your job with a specific employer requires you to leave is a step above slavery.

H1b, L1, and the proposed guest worker program are an attempt to create an underclass of cheap labor.

Tech seeing red over green-card proposal
By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: June 6, 2007, 4:00 AM PDT

Silicon Valley companies would be forced to compete with fast food joints, shops at the mall and truck-driving outfits for the same pool of legalized foreign hires under a controversial proposal that the U.S. Senate is debating this week.

The prospect of unpredictable competition for a fixed number of immigrant visas based on an applicant’s educational background and work history, which would replace the current employer-sponsored green card system, is drawing stiff opposition from technology lobbying groups that are pressing senators to preserve the current system.”

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